Kean, Sachs to Receive Awards from Woodrow Wilson Foundation

Former NJ governor, noted Columbia economist to be recognized at June 12 event

PRINCETON, N.J.—Former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean, Sr. and internationally noted economist Jeffrey D. Sachs will receive awards from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation at a dinner on June 12 at the Harvard Club of New York.

Dr. Sachs, who is Director of the Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is a senior United Nations advisor and author of three recent New York Times bestsellers: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011). In addition, this month he released a new book, To Move the World, which looks back at John F. Kennedy’s bold leadership. He is one of the world’s leading experts on economic development and the impacts of globalization.

“If the world economy’s current growth patterns continue, we face ecological disaster,” Dr. Sachs wrote in a March 2013 commentary. “If the world economy embraces a new growth pattern—one that harnesses advanced technologies like smart phones, broadband, precision agriculture, and solar power—we can spread prosperity while saving the planet.”

For his work in clarifying key global economic and environmental issues for wider audiences, Dr. Sachs will receive the Woodrow Wilson Foundation’s Frank E. Taplin, Jr. Public Intellectual Award. Previous recipients include Bill and Judith Moyers, Henry Louis Gates, and former North Carolina governor James B. Hunt, Jr.

The Taplin Award is named in honor of a former Woodrow Wilson Trustee and business leader who was active on the board of the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center, the Environmental Defense Fund, and a number of other area cultural organizations, and who helped bridge the gap between the academic world and the general public.

Gov. Kean, a two-term governor who subsequently served as president of Drew University for 15 years, is perhaps best known nationally for having chaired the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known as the 9/11 Commission. A former history teacher and longtime education advocate, he has recently been named co-chair of JerseyCAN, a nonprofit education research and policy organization committed to school reform in New Jersey.

“This country has always been about opportunity,” Gov. Kean said in a recent interview with the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. “The priority is to get schools working to create opportunity so that kids will have decent lives. Nothing is more important. Our whole future as a country and a democracy depends on how well we do in education over the next fifty to sixty years.”

Gov. Kean will receive the Woodrow Wilson Medal for Distinguished Service to Education, becoming the second governor to do so. Former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels received the medal in 2010.

Both Dr. Sachs and Gov. Kean will speak at the awards dinner next week. Nearly 150 guests are expected to attend, including philanthropists and key leaders in business, education, and policy.

“Governor Kean and Dr. Sachs represent the Woodrow Wilson Foundation’s highest ideals of commitment to the nation’s needs, and to the need for bringing education to bear in meeting contemporary challenges,” said Arthur Levine, the Foundation’s president. “We are tremendously proud to be able to honor them both.”